DIY Vintage Teapot Wind Chime

This fun and elegant vintage teapot wind chime will add some whimsy to your outdoor space, and some pretty sounds too.

Silver plate teapots aren’t very valued around here, like many other silver plate items, which is why I often see them at thrift stores and garage sales.

I have to admit that I simply can’t resist them when I find them at a great price.

Because I’ve made, and sold, quite a few wind chimes over the years I have quite the collection of thrifted pieces to pull from.

What I used to create my vintage teapot wind chime

To create this teapot wind chime I’m repurposing a rather elegant $2 vintage silver plate teapot that I found at a thrift store, and a $2 thrifted set of vintage silver plate goblets that I found at a garage sale.

This fabulous teapot is an Old English Reproduction, and is silver plate on copper. If you look closely you can see that the base in slightly damaged in the neck area. It was like this when I found it, and I’m sure that’s why it was only $2.

Before using any silver plate teapot as a wind chime you can polish it if you like, but I think this teapot is gorgeous just the way it is. The same goes for the goblets.

Here you can see that the damage makes the teapot look wonky. But even with the damage the teapot is very solid, and really lovely. So while it may not be great for actually serving tea, it’s an excellent wind chime candidate.

Supplies needed to create my vintage teapot wind chime

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Supplies List

• Silver plate teapot
• silver plate goblets
• measuring tape
• black marker
• metal spring clips
• one large key ring
• pliers
• rasp
• drill
• 3/32″ metal drill bit
• 1/8″ metal drill bit

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Measuring, marking, and drilling the teapot

To figure out where your goblet chimes will hang you have to measure around the base of the teapot.

This teapot was 13 1/4″ around. Since I have six goblets that I want to hang, I divided 13 1/4″ by 6, which means they have to be about 2 1/5″ apart. This number is to be used as a guide, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

When it came to the actual marking of where the holes will go, I used the center medallion on the front of the teapot as a guide and I marked the center spot on the base of the teapot on both sides. Then I measured out from there, and marked the approximate spots for my other four holes.

Drilling the holes into the teapot

I used my 3/32″ metal drill bit and drilled from the inside of the bottom out, using the marks on the outside of the base as my guide. This is a lot easier than drilling from the outside in, especially since this teapot has a bit of a thicker bottom rim. I then used my 1/8″ metal drill bit to make the holes a little larger.

Tips for drilling into metal items

There are a few things to keep in mind when drilling holes into a silver teapot, or any metal items for that matter.

• Always wear protective eyewear because drilling into any kind of metal produces small shards.
• Place some paper beneath where you’re drilling. Loosely fold the paper so you can safely and easily dispose of the metal shards. Dispose of the shards after drilling each hole so you start each drilling with a clean surface.
• Make sure your drill bits aren’t dull. If they are, drilling the holes will take forever and actually might not happen at all.
• Apply just enough pressure so the drill bit can do the real work, but not enough so that it breaks.
• Use a rasp to lightly file down the holes to get rid of any sharp edges.

Once I had the six holes drilled into the base of my teapot, I attached the metal spring clips. I found that using pliers to hold the clips open while slipping them into the holes was much easier than using my fingers.

Marking and drilling the silver goblets

These sweet little goblets needed to be drilled with two holes, one on either side. I just marked them by eye.

And I drilled the holes into them using the same process as with the teapot base, except I drilled them as placed above. You can see the top right one is already drilled.

Then I added a slightly smaller spring clips into the goblet holes.

Deconstructing a necklace

One of the things I love about making wind chimes is repurposing vintage and newer costume jewelry as the hangers.

For me, there is something therapeutic about deconstructing necklaces into pieces that can be used to beautify other things… like this teapot wind chime project.

The beads on this necklace are all metal.

Adding necklace pieces to teapot

When making a wind chime it’s helpful to hang your main piece first, in this case the teapot. This is so you can easily add the chimes and hangers at the bottom. Here I attached a necklace piece to each metal spring hook at the top of the teapot. And then those two necklaces pieces were attached to a large key ring at the top (which unfortunately got cut out of the pic).

I used the smaller necklace pieces as the main hangers for my goblets.

Tips for using necklaces for hanging chimes

• Use pliers to take the necklace apart.
• Measure the necklace pieces to figure out what you can use where.
• Make sure the necklace pieces you use are strong enough to carry the weight of where you use them. For instance, with my teapot wind chime, the two necklace pieces at the top need to be extra strong because they carry the weight of the entire wind chime. The six necklace pieces that carry the weight of each goblet, do not need to be as strong.

Adding goblets onto necklace pieces

To use these goblets as my chimes I needed to attach two spring hooks into the holes before adding the pieces of silver metal chain (from the same necklace). The metal chain pieces are then attached to another spring hook, which is then attached to the necklace piece.

And here’s my vintage teapot wind chime hanging on my back deck. It was a very grey day so the purple beads also look a little greyish.

I added a glass chandelier crystal to the top for a little extra bling.

The goblets hang beautifully, and I love how they look. The hanging length varies a little, but not enough that you’d really notice unless you really look closely. You could, of course, hang the goblets at different lengths if that’s a look you like.

Here’s a super short video so you can hear what it sounds like. And the birds sound pretty nice too.

This teapot wind chime was a fun project, and I’m going to love having it on my back deck. It’s far enough away from the pond that it won’t disturb birds coming to have their bird baths.

Final tips for your silver teapot wind chime

• The longer the chime hangers the less wind it takes to make your chimes chime. I live in a windy area so I made my chime hangers shorter so they don’t chime all the time.
• Wind chimes may scare your feathered friends so don’t place them near birdfeeders or birdbaths.
• Anything that is outdoors will age and wear over time. You can place your wind chime in a covered deck or porch to slow down that process. And also store it inside over the winter months.
• Silver plate pieces will tarnish over time, whether they are inside or outside. You can polish them, or leave them to age gracefully like I do.

I hope this project has inspired you to create a teapot wind chime of your own. They make great gifts as well. You can find more wind chime projects here.

It would be greatly appreciated if you would pin this project to your favorite Pinterest board, and also share it with your friends.

Thanks so much for reading and until next time,

keep on keepin’ on!

XOX